Images(2)

Portrait of St. George Tucker (1752-1827)

Date1807

Artist/Maker Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin (1770-1852)

Engraver Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin (1770-1852)

OriginAmerica, Virginia, Richmond

MediumMezzotint and line engraving on wove paper

DimensionsOther (Sight): 2 1/16 × 2 1/16 in (5.24 × 5.24cm)
Framed: 6 × 5 15/16 × 13/16 in (15.24 × 15.08 × 2.06cm)

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1976-7

Label TextThis engraving depicts St. George Tucker (1752-1827) a Williamsburg resident and lawyer. Tucker had attended the College of William & Mary for about a year and then apprenticed with the prominent legal scholar George Wythe. During the American Revolution, Tucker was involved in smuggling operations between Virginia and Bermuda and served in the American military. After the war, Tucker worked as a rector and professor of law at the College of William & Mary. He published A Dissertation on Slavery, a plan to abolish slavery in Virginia that required the emigration of formerly enslaved people. Tucker himself did not free his slaves. In 1807, Tucker sat for the French artist and engraver Charles Balthazar Julein Fevret de Saint-Memin (1700-1852). Saint-Memin had traveled to the city of Richmond due to the trial of Aaron Burr for treason. The influx of witnesses, Burr supporters, and trial spectators led Saint-Memin to travel and take advantage of the strong client base in the city. Saint-Memin’s profile portraiture benefited significantly from the trial, with the artist making more than 120 portraits during his short time in the city. While St. George Tucker was not the presiding judge of the Aaron Burr trial, he sat on the Virginia Court of Appeals, based in Richmond.

Saint-Memin was a French émigré and former military officer who fled France during the French Revolution. The Saint-Memin family planned to travel to their plantation on Saint-Domingue but abandoned that plan when the Haitian Revolution began. Ending up in British North America, Saint-Memin was a prolific artist traveling up and down the East Coast, engraving more than 800 portraits. He created his portraits with a physiognotrace, a mechanical drawing instrument that artists used to accurately draw portraits. Sitters could purchase the life-size drawings that the physiognotrace produced as well as small engravings of the duplicated portrait. Saint-Memin also made custom frames for many of his clients’ portraits. Most of the frames were gilded and the glass decorated with black paint and gold leaf. Tucker’s receipt from Saint-Memin records that Tucker paid $14.50 for the portrait, the engravings, and the frame, indicating that the frame had cost at least $10. With the revival of neoclassicism during the Federal period, Americans increasingly sought out portraiture. Portraiture was viewed as an honorific style that alluded to the Roman Republic and the virtue of its leaders. In 1814, Saint-Memin returned to France permanently with his family after the overthrow of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. Upon leaving, he destroyed his physiognotrace and ended his career as an artist. Later, in 1817, Saint-Memin became the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Dijon, France.ProvenanceBefore 1976, Norton Asner (Baltimore, Maryland); 1976-present, purchased by The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (Williamsburg, VA).